Cameleon98

You may also find Cameleon as a java applet on Helsingin Sanomat (capital newspaper in
Finland) website.

Cameleon has collected the following honors:

Disccover competition 1998 Finalist

Honorary: best technical implementation (Disccover competition)

Game of the day (mbnet.fi)

Best domestic game of the month (MikroBitti)

History

Cameleon98 is a bit longer project than most people know. It was first
coded in pascal about 10 years ago by me, and ever since it's been one project
to build on any new platform I or Toni Lönnberg get on seriously. I've made
DOS, doorgame and windows versions, Toni has made Atari ST and Java versions.

The windows version - Cameleon98 - was my entry to the Disccover game design/code
competition in Finland, 1998. It is a logic/puzzle game of sorts for Win95 and NT4,
and contains HTML help pages - read more from there (game play, history, etc).

Comments from the Jury

Addictive game which gained much thanks due to its technical implementation. Enthralling and especially finished.

Cameleon is the only game in the whole competition which includes genuinely new ideas. This puzzle/logic game is impish in the way that at least this juror noticed that he lost if he tried to think which color to play, but won all the time if he just rambled random keys as fast as he could! The programmer must not have thought about this strategy. The game would work fine as a two-player game.

Comments in Pelit-Magazine

Unquestionably the most original idea in the competition. Cameleon is also one of the few single-player games. It deserves a tip of hat from the challenging artificial intelligence, granted that its idea is rather simple. Thanks Cameleon deserves also from the fact that it's been done for Win95.

Cameleon is not one of those games which cause any need to play or bigger passions. Instead it is a great time-killer, like win95 solitaire or minesweeper. A quick test with some people who don't generally play computer games came up with the same results.

Cameleon doesn't shame if compared to Microsoft Entertainment Pack's puzzle games. Of the whole competition it had by far most simple and original idea and implementation was finished nicely.

These comments were on a couple page article about the competition, with biggest picture featuring cameleon; pelit editors didn't have the final results when the magazine came out, and they obviously thought cameleon would win.>/p>

Comments from mbnet

Cameleon98 was Game of the Day in mbnet (approx. 14/7/1998 - exact date has been lost). Rough finnish-to-english translation yet again:

Simple yet ingenious idea is the strongest side of Cameleon. An area where tiles of four different colors have been tossed randomly acts like the game board. The area covered by these tiles should then be conquered, until the whole board has been overtaken by the players. The artificial intelligence acts like a fair opponent, which is good as there is no two-player mode. There are several different sizes of the board and there are enough other options as well. Disccover 98-competition finalist.

Comments from MikroBitti

Cameleon98 was the Best Domestic Game of the Month in MikroBitti 9/98. I guess you know the drill..:

Puzzle game that participated in Disccover-competition, and surprises with its original idea. One gets to play against computer opponent with diverse level- and AI options on taking over a field built from multicolored blocks. Exceptionally well made, easy to learn and playable. Requires Win95.

First-grade implementation and original idea lifted Cameleon into its deserved place as the best domestic game

..all in all, not bad considering that I after teaching myself windows c programming I built
the game in about two weeks.